By Emily Landau | Photography by Sian Richards courtesy of the National Ballet of Canada

Elena Lobsanova knows disappointment. The Moscow-born dancer began training at the National Ballet School in 1996, when she was nine years old. Then, in 2005, a year after she joined the professional company, she suffered a stress fracture in her second metatarsal. The foot injury plagued her for almost two years, a serious setback. She dedicated herself to a regimen of pilates, gyrotonics, ankle-strengthening exercises and basic ballet classes to regain strength and match her fellow dancers. It worked: she was promoted from the corps to second soloist and, this past spring, to first soloist. The influential Russian choreographer Alexei Ratmansky selected Lobsanova—wowed, he says, by the “organic quality of her movements”—to dance the part of Juliet in this fall’s Romeo and Juliet.